Conscious time judgments related to conditioned time intervals and voluntary control of the alpha rhythm.

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Abstract
The accuracy of conscious time estimation of an interval of 9.4 sec. was compared to the accuracy of delayed, trace and cyclic conditioned responses of the human occipital a rhythm. Light was the unconditioned stimulus and sound or time intervals were the unconditioned stimuli. The conditioned responses were all anticipatory with an avg. of 8.2 sec. for 9.4 sec. conditioned interval and showed little variation (S.D. = 0.7 sec). Conscious estimation of the same interval tended to be longer (M = 10.5 sec.) and showed greater variation (S.D. = 2.5 sec). There was no correlation between conscious time estimations and the conditioned response, of the alpha rhythm which was much more accurate than the conscious judgments. In other experiments conditioned response of the alpha rhythm was established to a "voluntary stimulus," subvocal repetition of the word "block" with voluntary manual response. In this manner voluntary control of the [alpha] rhythm was established. Thus the same response, blocking of the occipital a rhythm, was conditioned in one way independent of voluntary control and in another way under voluntary control. The differentiating factor was the type of stimulus to which the conditioned response was established.

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